This is an oft cited quip that might appear as a headstone epitaph for a hypochondriac. The more modern psychiatric diagnosis for hypochondriasis is Health Anxiety Disorder.
I think that in my writings about my medical residency experience, I have mentioned the case of DeeDee who came to our ED many times with salicylate poisoning resulting from ingesting toxic quantities of aspirin for headaches. Years after I (and every other medical resident) had admitted this patient, one of the younger medical teams diagnosed her with a brain and esophageal tumor.
For years, she had been trying to tell us that she was sick, but we had relied on her normal brain CT scans, upper GI studies, and labs to determine that she was not. Sigh.
This evening, I read a summary of a Swedish study that compared the causes of death among a large group of individuals who had a diagnosis of Health Anxiety Disorder and many more who did not. These are cohort studies, and they are prone to a variety of weaknesses. Nonetheless, with a large number of diverse individuals in the study population, their results can be enlightening.
It turned out in this study that individuals who had been diagnosed with Health Anxiety Disorder had 84% higher all-cause mortality and were four times more likely to have died of suicide during the surveillance period.
They had been trying to tell their doctors that they were sick. Alas!